ATG People in the News 5/19/15

Industry veteran noted for her dedication to developing a future-facing scholarly communication ecosystem

Philadelphia, PA – May 18, 2015 – Today, at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Council of Science Editors (CSE), Dr. Amy Brand of Digital Science received the Award for Meritorious Achievement. This award is the highest given by the CSE, and is presented to a person or institution that embraces the purposes of the CSE – the improvement of scientific communication through the pursuit of high standards in all activities connected with editing.

With nearly 25 years’ experience, Brand currently holds the position of VP Academic & Research Relations at technology company Digital Science, where she is responsible for overseeing theNorth American operations. With broad experience in scholarly communication and academic publishing, university administration, entrepreneurial innovation and management of complex initiatives, Brand also acts as the company’s domain expert on North American universities and their research, administrative and policy requirements.

“Amy Brand has been at the forefront of developing digital solutions linking the research community to the publishing community,” said Ken Heideman, awards chairman, Council of Science Editors. “She was a key person in the implementation of CrossRef, a service now widely regarded as indispensable. She was also on the founding board of ORCID, another initiative that will soon be recognized as critically important in STM publishing. In a nutshell, Amy’s work and career exemplify the mission of CSE and she is very deserving of its highest honor.”

“We are so proud Amy has won this prestigious award recognizing her significant contributions to academic research,” said Timo Hannay, Managing Director, Digital Science. “She has had a long and varied career immersed in scientific and scholarly communications, and brings true insight into the perspectives of all stakeholders in academic research. At Digital Science, she is helping apply that knowledge to continue to provide tools that offer support at every stage of the research cycle.”

Previous winners of this award, since it was established in 1969, have included ORCID, John Sack, CrossRef, and Drummond Rennie, among many others. Dr. Brand’s career includes a distinctive combination of leadership experiences in book and journal publishing, new technologies, university administration and community-wide initiatives to shape the future of scholarly communication. Her most recent collaborative undertaking, Project CRediT, endeavors to improve the attribution system for co-authored published research so that credit is more fairly allocated.

Prior to Digital Science, Brand held the position of Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments and Information at Harvard University. She also has held positions at CrossRef; Ingenta, Inc.; and the MIT Press. Brand holds a doctorate in Cognitive Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a Bachelor of Art in Linguistics from the Barnard College of Columbia University.

STM Publishing reports that “led by Douglas Wright, Director of Membership, the ORCID membership team brings regional expertise in research management, publishing, analytics, research funding, and open access, and fluency in English, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. The team, based in the US, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, and France, is already engaging the research community and supporting our members around the world. Among other plans, they will be working with the community to host regional “information plumbing” workshops to support community understanding and integration of persistent identifiers in research information management workflows and systems. Please join us in welcoming our new colleagues!

Josh Brown, Regional Director, Europe, based in Sergy, France. Josh directs the operations of ORCID EU. Before joining ORCID last summer, Josh was consortium and operations manager for SCOAP3, programme manager for digital infrastructure at Jisc, project offer for SHERPA-LEAP at University College London, and held positions in the library at the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex. He earned an MA in Information Management from the University of Brighton and a BA in Philosophy and English from the University of Sussex.

Matthew Buys, Regional Director, Africa and Middle East, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Previously, Matthew was the Account Manager at Thomson Reuters covering the Eastern and Southern Africa region; and prior to that he was the Regional Sales Manager at EBSCO Information Services. He completed a BA (Psychology) and Post-Graduate Diploma in Management at the University of the Witwatersrand. Matthew is working to complete a qualification in Information Systems covering developer skills including, Java, Flash, XML, html, Perl, and SQL.

Nobuko Miyairi (starting July 1), Regional Director, Asia-Pacific, based in Tokyo, Japan. Prior to joining ORCID, Nobuko held positions at Scholarly & Scientific Research business of Thomson Reuters, and most recently at Nature Publishing Group as Consultant/Analyst, Asia Pacific, where she worked closely with research organizations, government policy makers and funding bodies to provide solutions for research management and promotions. As a librarian by training, Nobuko earned an MLIS from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and brings an extensive working knowledge in needs-based consultancy and information management. Nobuko is fluent in Japanese and English.

Lilian Pessoa, Regional Director, Latin America, based in São Paulo, Brazil. Lilian came to ORCID after serving as Vice President of PCG do Brasil, where she worked with Latin American universities and consortia such as CAPES (Brazil), CINCEL (Chile), CONACyT (Mexico), and SENESCyT (Ecuador). Prior to PCG, she was a sales manager at Cengage Learning. Lilian has a degree in History from the University of São Paulo and an MBA in Management from Fundação Getúlio Vargas. She is fluent in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.